Mar
16Religion in American History Television: Shake It Like a Shaker in Enfield, NH
Filed Under (Religion Research) by Admin on 16-03-2010
Randall Stephens
I like Ken Burnss documentaries. Im not one of those Burns haters, who accuses him of mawkish American exceptionalism. Nope, not me. Two of his films from the 1980s dont get the kind of attention or airplay that they deserve. Thomas Hart Benton (1988) profiles the diminutive, scrappy regionalist painter who shared his name with Old Bullion, his great uncle, the tall, pugnacious senator from Missouri. Among other things, Benton taught Jackson 
Pollock how to drink. He taught him too well, obviously. The other film, a pole away, is The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God (1984), an elegiac, wistful tour of an American original. Narrated by the avuncular David McCullough, the film wonderfully weaves together interviews, dramatic readings, and ancient daguerreotypes. (True, in this regard it is like all the other Burns movies.)
